


your soul and its predecessor

by seraf



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Aftermath, Ambiguous Relationships, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Character Study, Ghosts, Implied/Referenced Incest, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Introspection, Multi, Open to Interpretation, Post-Canon, Post-Game(s), Pre-Game Personalities (New Dangan Ronpa V3), Trans Chabashira Tenko, Trans Character, Virtual Reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 08:16:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18988795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraf/pseuds/seraf
Summary: when the ghosts come, they come in pairs, for the most part.( it wasn’t enough for danganronpa to kill one person, no - for each victim of the game, there was the person they used to be and the person they became, both of them, whatever tsumugi would say, real people, with thoughts and hopes and dreams and loves and lives to lose. )shuichi is revisited by the people he knew, and meets for the first time the people they were before.





	your soul and its predecessor

when the ghosts come, they come in pairs, for the most part.

 

( it wasn’t enough for danganronpa to kill one person, no - for each victim of the game, there was the person they used to be and the person they became, both of them, whatever tsumugi would say, real people, with thoughts and hopes and dreams and loves and lives to lose. )

 

angie is first, though she didn’t die first. angie-the-painter giggles and says that it’s fate, that it’s by the hand of atua, that her spirit recovers so quickly, visiting shuichi soon enough after the simulation that he still has an iv in, unable to digest solid foods. she hugs him to her incorporeal chest and uses her finger to trace out shapes on his forehead as though she’s drawing in the condensation on a bus window. _you must have divine luck, shuichi!_ she almost sings, her legs swinging off the side of his bed, before her eyes darken in that serious, frightening way that they have. _that, or you must have done something to be worthy of divine punishment._

 

shuichi thinks it might be closer to the latter.

 

angie the mundane, with her white hair in a modest braid down her back and her eyes distant and tired, just sits with him for awhile, in a companionable silence. it’s as though they know each other well, and it’s as though they’ve never met before. _do you regret it?_ shuichi can’t help but ask her. _the person they made you into, or what happened to her?_

 

she shrugs, a stiff motion of a thing. _i can’t complain. it was my choice, wasn’t it?_

 

kaito comes next, with his wide, warm grin, and his shirt no longer spattered pink with his own blood, and shuichi cries when he sees him. kaito-the-astronaut ( kaito, the luminary of the stars, kaito, his best friend ) chastizes him for it, says it isn’t very manly of him, but it’s in a soft voice, with no real bite to it. they both pretend his hand doesn’t go through shuichi’s back when he tries to pat him on the shoulder, and shuichi grumbles that kaito has an unfair advantage in their push-up contests now that he doesn’t need air or feel tired anymore.

 

it’s like rubbing alcohol on raw skin. necessary, cleansing, but so, _so_ painful.

 

kaito the mundane is all bared teeth and bloody knuckles and contempt. calls shuichi a sissy and spits on the floor and punches the wall as though his fists still have weight behind them. but still, shuichi can’t help but feel pity for him - angry and bitter and hackles raised as he is, he’s still just a kid. and he’s still just dead.

 

kirumi the maid is ever still about selfless devotion. rests a transparent hand on shuichi’s face when he cries for her and forgives him, for sentencing her to her fate. there were no people waiting for her, no meaning behind the blood on her hands, and thus, in conclusion, his own. she closes her eyes every time she walks past his hospital window, not wanting to see even the four-floor drop.

 

 _i . . . do not know what to do with myself,_ she admits, when shuichi asks why she’s visiting him. _i have no cause, no master, no orders, anymore._ he asks her for a request - asks her to take some time to _rest._ he hopes it’s the right thing to do.

 

kirumi the mundane is defensive and snaps at him. teeth bared, but in a different way than kaito’s - his are for the love of the fight, where hers are those of a cornered animal, making one last desperate bid for survival. an ironic thing, for a ghost. shuichi tries to console her, to reassure her, and she looks at him through narrowed eyes.

 

 _i don’t know you,_ she bites out. _don’t act as though you know me._

 

miu is next, defensive and brash and rude, and shuichi is almost relieved when she makes a sexual joke about him, when she says _kokichi, the little shit - he didn’t even gimme the chance to take a shower after he went and fucked me, huh?_ for her sake, ignores the fact that her chokers are now gone, ignores the restless tapping, tapping, tapping of her fingers, because they programmed a big beautiful brain into her, and now she has nothing to do with it, and no one that remembers her as anything but the center-fold danganronpa character. reduced to fanservice, even with all her talent did for them.

 

 _you know,_ shuichi says, _your inventions might’ve helped save us, in the end._

 

 _of course they did, spew-ichi,_ she says, feigning confidence ( and g-d, it’s so much easier to see it’s an act, now - she’s literally and figuratively see-through ), _even after i died, i was the smartest one outta you fuckers, huh?_ and it’s so much to just give her a weak little smile and agree.

 

miu the mundane’s act isn’t confident like miu-the-inventor’s is, just calm. put together. the assurance that she knows what she’s doing, that she’s fine. but people who are fine and steady don’t sign up for a game show where even when you win, you lose. she ends up reassuring _him,_ and isn’t that just the way of it all?

 

( _just the cherry on a shit sundae,_ miu the inventor describes it. _just the way things are,_ says miu the mundane, eyes dropping, shoulders defeated. )

 

rantaro is the first of them to not appear in two seperate ghosts. he looks like a set of overlapping images, all transparent, all blending into each other, melting together. there _is_ no rantaro the mundane or rantaro the adventurer, rantaro the survivor, rantaro the ???. sometimes, one of the afterimages speaks on their own, and sometimes they speak in sync, their mouths and movements lagging a few seconds after their words, like a streamed movie with bad connection.

 

 _i’m glad to be out,_ rantaro, the amalgamate of rantaro, tells him. _i’m not sure who i am,or who i was._

 

 _i don’t have the answer for you,_ shuichi admits, because he feels responsible, in a way. maybe it turned out that kaede didn’t actually kill him. but if he had noticed, and if he had stopped her, tsumugi wouldn’t have been able to use her plan to kill him.

 

 _i don’t expect you to,_ rantaro says. his smile is easy-going, and so, so tired. _you don’t have to always have the answers, shuichi._ and he’s gone again, before shuichi can say that that’s his _job,_ that’s what he’s _good for,_ as a detective.

 

strangely enough, kaede appears next. ( maybe it’s not strange at all. maybe even this is written, pre-ordained. ) kaede the pianist comes with the sunset, sitting on the edge of his bed and holding his hand between two of hers. _you did such a good job,_ she tells him. _i’m sorry i wasn’t around to help you._

 

 _didn’t i fail?,_ he wants to ask her. _there’s so few of us left. is this really what you wanted from me? didn’t i fail you?_ but just once. just once, he wants things to end well, to feel like after all the blood and tears they shed, their ending was worth something. so all he says is _thank you,_ all he says is _i missed you._

 

before she leaves again, to wherever they go next, she hums him _clair de lune._

 

kaede the mundane sneers at him, and they sit in silence for a few heartbeats ( his, not hers. ) before either one of them talks. _so, you think i’m right now?_ she asks, her voice bitter, bitter, bitter as the tannins of the tea kiyo sometimes made, _i said i have no faith in humanity. what about you? do you have it, anymore?_

 

 _i’m not sure,_ shuichi confesses, and it feels like a betrayal.

 

next is tenko, coming in the moment after kaede leaves as though she passed off the baton. oddly enough, she seems . . . calmer, calmer than she ever was in the game, and turns it down outright when shuichi tries to apologize to her. shuichi sees the clear set of her jaw, her shoulders, like she’s gotten some kind of closure, and wonders if he’s the only one of the survivors to be seeing ghosts.

 

 _i got to see himiko grow,_ tenko says, her smile a little wistful. _i’m not sure how to say it, but . . . i think she was more motivated by my death than anything i did or would’ve been able to do while i was still alive, y’know?_ she strikes a neo-aikido pose, as though even with the way things are now, she’s going to be able to effortlessly flip shuichi.

 

( he . . . wouldn’t put it past her, honestly. )

 

 _you better make sure none of these showrunners make her uncomfortable, shuichi! and if i find out that_ you _have in anyway, i’ll use my neo-aikido to tear you apart, you degenerate!_

 

he could cry at how familiar it is. _thank you,_ he says to her, completely seriously.

 

tenko the mundane is . . . astonishingly normal. she looks almost mousy, in a brown boy’s school uniform, with her long hair tied up in a tight bun at the back of her head. she doesn’t meet shuichi’s eyes, at first.

 

 _are you okay?_ he asks, eventually. this is and this isn’t his friend, and he can’t quite pick up on her body language, familiar and unfamilar all at once.

 

 _yes,_ she says, body tension pulling her muscles taut as an overdrawn bow, and his brows knit together, not wanting her to snap. _i . . . got what i wanted, didn’t i? but . . ._ i’m _still around, not just other tenko. i didn’t think . . . that would happen._

 

 _i’m glad you are,_ he says, and means it, _you seem like a nice girl. if it’s possible . . . i want to be friends with you, too, not just neo-aikido tenko._ he offers her a tiny smile, no teeth and warm eyes, and she returns it, tentative and out of the corner of her face.

 

ryoma follows her, a couple days later, and shuichi can’t help but grimace, remembering his motive video, remembering the sight of his body being torn to shreds by pirahnas, the tiny pieces of flesh still sticking to his bones, the red - no, the _pink_ water that had flooded the gym. kirumi saying she killed him because it was _easy._

 

 _so in the end, i didn’t need to die after all, huh,_ he says, in the same even baritone that he says most things. ryoma the tennis player gave up before he ever ended up in the middle of a killing game. a bitter part of shuichi wonders if that made him the best adjusted to the environment out of all of them. at least he _thought_ he was dying for something.

 

 _none of them - none of us did,_ he says, a little bitter. _everything was just . . . for someone’s entertainment._ ryoma huffs out a breath, tugs down the edge of his hat a little, shadow covering his eyes.

 

 _you know, shuichi . . ._ he says, eventually, _maybe it was all for nothing. but i gotta tell you, you came a pretty far way. i don’t think you’ve got a ways to go, anymore._ and he leaves shuichi with that to dwell on, before he leaves.

 

ryoma the mundane is also a little burned out, but not because the mafia killed his entire family and he killed them, just . . . poverty, the probability he couldn’t afford college or become anything after they left high school, the mundanity of depression-induced apathy and a one-way track to nowhere at all. signing up for dangan ronpa because why the hell not? either the prize money settled his issues, or he wouldn’t have to deal with them anyway.

 

 _i wish the other me was like you,_ shuichi says, looking down and away. _from what i could see . . . he just wanted to kill._

 

 _true,_ ryoma says with a shrug. _but . . . if he hadn’t, you wouldn’t exist right now, you know. and . . . maybe the games never would’ve stopped._

 

 _i don’t like thinking about it like that,_ shuichi confesses. _the idea that i only exist because someone wanted a chance to murder for other people’s entertainment._

 

 _no one would,_ ryoma says, _but that’s the truth of it, you know. just be glad your other self didn’t get what he wanted, yeah? or . . . not all of it. ultimate detective, but no murderer. never seemed like you even considered it._

 

 _i didn’t,_ shuichi says slowly, blinking at the realization. it wasn’t something easy to do, to realize that you _didn’t_ feel or think something.

 

_then you don’t need to have any regrets._

 

next is one of the few other people who doesn’t come in pairs, and the one he’d been dreading most of all. tsumugi’s smile is practically serene, as though she weren’t responsible for the deaths of so many people. ( two for each of them, and . . . this wasn’t her first game, either, if he remembered what she said before. ) she sits next to him and he has to physically swallow down the urge to just leave the room.

 

 _it’s a shame,_ tsumugi, tsumugi the cosplayer, tsumugi the mastermind, ( tsumugi the mundane? ) says, voice sounding more wistful than anything. _after an ending like that, they’ll be on hiatus for a couple of years at least. they’ll have to reboot the series completely._

 

 _no one’s rebooting anything,_ he snaps at her, hands curled into fists so tight that his nails bite crescent moons into his palms. for a moment, he feels what it must be like to be kaito, because for a burning-hot second, he wants to hit her. for everything she put them through - wouldn’t it just be fair? doesn’t he have a right to that?

 

but it’s not how he was written. it fades as soon as it had sparked to life.

 

 _maybe,_ tsumugi says, with an indifferent sort of shrug. _maybe it won’t be under the name danganronpa, anymore. no more hope’s peak, or monokuma, or junko enoshima. and that’d be a plain shame, y’know? but . . . i don’t think this is the end of all killing games. they’ll just find a new form._

 

 _no,_ shuichi says, with an adamance he doesn’t completely have, not really. _what we did will mean something. if it didn’t . . . the audience wouldn’t’ve wanted things that way._

 

 _you’re the protagonists,_ she says with a shrug. _they wanted to see you succeed, and this was a new twist than anything that had been written before. but it’s thanks to the killing game being around for so long that they made that choice._

 

 _no,_ shuichi insists. _there are other forms of entertainment that don’t demand this much._

 

 _if it makes you feel better,_ she says sweetly, before standing, sweeping off the front of her long blue skirt. _shuichi . . . i think you’re one of the best characters i’ve ever written,_ she tells him, turning right before she leaves, and her voice is so deeply _earnest._

 

he looks away from her and refuses to look back until she’s gone.

 

next is gonta, which makes shuichi’s chest ache. he gives shuichi a sad smile, a deeply tender sort of thing. gonta the entomologist doesn’t talk about the game or about his death until shuichi is ready, instead telling shuichi the scientific name and the life cycle of the moth on his ceiling, the ants that make their way across his windowsill, with a voice warm and fascinated and so gentle.

 

it’s so much easier to think about the way ants train aphids or the process a moth goes through during metamorphisis, the leap of faith as it falls apart completely, only genetic memory telling it that it will reform after it melts apart. it’s so much easier to _not_ think about the game, and betrayal, and gonta crying on the stand because he didn’t even know what he had done, just that everyone else was saying that he had done it.

 

but . . . shuichi said he wasn’t going to look away from the hard truths, anymore.

 

 _do you remember it, now?_ he asks, finally.

 

 _no,_ gonta says, face falling. _gonta thinks . . . maybe other gonta was in the virtual world. gonta from before everything happen. maybe that why kokichi was able to convince gonta to kill miu._

 

 _are you mad at kokichi?_ shuichi asks. he’s not sure _how_ to feel about kokichi, anymore. it’s an indisputable fact that without him, they wouldn’t have been able to solve the final mystery.

 

 _no,_ gonta says, simply. _kokichi just trying to help everyone in his own way._

 

gonta the mundane wrote his application to danganronpa from juvie, he tells shuichi. _i just wanted to be a better person, y’know? and . . . i’d already killed somebody. even if they wanted to make a murderer out of me, instead, it wouldn’t take much of their fiddling._ he sighs. _guess i kinda got a bit of both. doesn’t that just fuckin’ take the cake._

 

 _i’m sorry,_ shuichi says. _you deserved better._

 

gonta snorts, humorless and bitter, and the expression seems so unnatural, on his face. _says who? it’s never been our fuckin’ choice._

 

the next one is one of the others he’s been dreading.

 

kokichi ouma, the supreme leader, is expressionless when he appears in shuichi’s room, before the blankness wipes off his countenance, lazily grinning instead, hands folding behind his head. _hey there, shumai! didja miss me, huh? what’d you think of the surprise kaito and i came up with?_

 

shuichi realizes kokichi is trying to rile him up, but he doesn’t know whether to play along, or to just be . . . honest. if he is, will kokichi even believe it?

 

 _thank you,_ he says, finally, because kokichi is _dead,_ after all, and it can’t do any harm at this point. there’s no more audience, watching this. no more mastermind to fool, no more plans for kokichi to unravel, picking apart the threads. _for what you were trying to do. and . . . for all you did. we managed to stop it because of the things you left behind._

 

he hesitates, rubs his arm. _but . . . with kaito. i’m sorry, but . . . did you really not expect me to be able to solve who it was under there? it doesn’t . . . seem like you, especially with how much faith it seemed like you had in my detective abilities before._

 

and there’s that terrifying blankness for a moment on kokichi’s face. somehow, it’s more unnerving than any of his demonic smiles before. but it never lasts long, and now is no exception, kokichi shrugging, a loose and casual gesture, laughing as he does. _neeheehee! guess you’re right, shuichi! you just really outsmarted me, huh?_

 

 _. . . kokichi,_ shuichi says, voice a little pained, because kokichi - it’s just his intuition, but it seems like kokichi is _still_ lying, after everything, after even death. _please, just - tell me the truth._

 

he doesn’t see kokichi’s face, but he can see his back, and he can see his hands curl into fists. his voice is . . . bitter, when he speaks, and he does so in a genuine way. or . . . shuichi thinks it’s genuine. who can tell, with kokichi?

 

 _i didn’t underestimate you, shuichi. i took a chance. i thought . . . you might be able to figure out what i was trying to do, and lead the trial knowing that. and . . . you did figure it out, in the end, but just a little bit too late._ he turns around to face him again with a thin smile. _oh well! nothing we can do about it now, huh?_

 

a guilty part of shuichi is a little bit glad that kokichi suddenly leaves, then. he’s not sure what he would have said, otherwise.

 

kokichi the mundane looks . . . smaller than kokichi the supreme leader, somehow. physically, they’re exactly the same, but he walks with his shoulders curled in on himself and none of the self-assurance, false or not, that kokichi ouma as shuichi knew him does. the difference, shuichi thinks, is that both kokichis look suspicious, but the supreme leader looks like someone you should be suspicious _of,_ while the mundane looks like he’s suspicious of the world around him.

 

 _is it strange,_ kokichi asks suddenly, _seeing a bunch of faces you know, but with the wrong people attached to them?_

 

 _yes,_ shuichi admits. _though i wouldn’t say you’re the wrong people, just . . . different ones._ ( grimly, a part of him wonders if he should thank kiyo, for giving him the experience of knowing two different people in the same body _before_ all of this went down. ) _i wish . . . i got the chance to be friends with you, too._

 

 _well . . ._ kokichi starts, slowly, looking down and away, _i don’t think the other me will ever admit to being friends. so i guess i’ll just have to do it for him. even if this is the only time we talk - can i call you my friend, too?_ his expression is vulnerable, in a way that game-kokichi’s would never be, even though distrust still marks his movements, his expressions.

 

 _of course,_ shuichi says firmly. it’s the least he can do.

 

kiyo is . . . when he visits, shuichi thinks that he must be the last one. he’s unsure whether he can call the two korekiyos he sees two distinct people, or closer to one and a half, or just one and a shadow, one and a bad dream.

 

kiyo the anthropologist looks like he did at the end of his exectution. all the ghosts before him have been just as colorful as they were in life, but he’s a pale white-blue, shirtless and half-melted, like someone poured salt onto a slug, freezing his expression into a permanent one of twisted horror, his last moments burned on his soul.

 

shuichi remembers the smell of cooking meat, and his stomach turns over.

 

theirs is the longest silence yet, both of them looking down at their knees. kiyo looks as though he isn’t sure what to say, but like he doesn’t want to _leave,_ either. when he speaks, it’s in barely a whisper, as though his throat is congested with his own melted flesh. _i’m sorry,_ he says, and for a spiteful moment, shuichi doesn’t want to accept it. wants to let him rot, trapped in that half-gone state forever.

 

but he was made for this just as much as any of the rest of them were. _yeah,_ he replies, eloquently. he picks at the skin around his fingernails for a moment before looking up at him, at the way his face still looks _terrified,_ in that moment almost like a frightened child _._ shuichi takes a deep breath. _your sister . . . wasn’t a very good person, was she?_

 

the reaction that gets is . . . moreor less the one he had expected. kiyo’s hands curl into fists and the part of his face he can still control contorts in anger. _she was not! you don’t understand, she - she loved me,_ but the doubt is clear in his voice and in the way his hands dig into the places on his arms where his . . . soul? collects in drips like melted wax. _she loved me,_ he says again, but it sounds hollow. like he’s trying to convince himself.

 

 _are you sure?_ shuichi asks, quietly.

 

 _no,_ kiyo says, and the honesty in his voice is painful when he says, _but she was all i ever had._

 

 _you have us,_ shuichi says automatically, and he . . . isn’t sure if he means it or not.

 

kiyo was, fundamentally, not a good person, when it came to some of the things he had done. but in more ways than one, someone had made him into that. someone wrote korekiyo shinguji to be the kind of person who would make a good pawn in a murder game, and somebody turned the person korekiyo shinguji into a torn-apart mess who thought pain was beautiful, because if he didn’t, it might kill him.

 

 _i don’t think i do,_ kiyo murmurs, as though he’s the one who can see through shuichi. _but . . . however briefly it may have been, thank you for being my friend, shuichi._ he leaves with that, leaving shuichi almost more confused than he had been before he came.

 

korekiyo the mundane looks so normal it’s bizarre, in comparison to kiyo-the-anthropologist’s strange mask and customized uniform and bandaged hands, wearing a nomal gakuran and surgical mask. still, shuichi is a little cautious, and he blurts out - _so, why do_ you _wear that?_

 

kiyo reaches for the mask on his face as though he’s surprised that it’s still there, tugging it down and setting it in his lap. _i . . . suppose i don’t need this anymore, huh?_ to shuichi’s relief, there’s no streak of blood-red lipstick underneath, no change in his eyes when he takes it off. just a face, sharply angled and almost . . . pretty.

 

 _it’s nothing like . . . his,_ kiyo clarifies, hands resting in his lap. _i was sick before i signed up for danganronpa. terminally so._

 

_is that why . . . ?_

 

kiyo nods, mouth pressing into a line. _i figured . . . it would be better to to die like that than slowly in the hospital. and i . . . told them as much. that i was dying anyway, that i didn’t want to survive the game, so they could make whatever victim or murderer they wanted out of me._ his mouth curls into a bitter smile. _i suppose . . . i got what i asked for._

 

 _do you regret it?_ shuichi asks.

 

 _i don’t know,_ mundane kiyo says, looking at his hands. _like i said . . . i was going to die either way, you know? at least . . . at least with this, i had some control over it. not much, but . . . more._ he looks up at shuichi with the same yellow eyes shuichi knows, but more honest, now. _do you regret it?_

 

 _i don’t know either,_ shuichi admits.

 

he thought that was the end of it.

 

but there’s one last ghost to visit him, sitting almost on his chest, waking him up right as the witching hour begins, the night eerily silent and his room completely dark.

 

somehow, he can still make them out, in the darkness.

 

shuichi remembers reading somewhere once that if you met yourself in person, face to face, you wouldn’t be able to recognize them. and . . . that feels deeply, uncomfortably true right now, as he scrambles to sit up with a muffled shout, looking at a boy with his face and his hat and an expression he’s pretty sure his face has never made, but . . . must have, apparently.

 

 _who are you?_ he asks, as though he doesn’t already know the answer.

 

 _i’m shuichi saihara,_ says the boy with his face, sitting on the other end of his bed, grinning wide and childish and excited as though he hadn’t told the audition judges ( and effectively the whole world ) that he wanted to come up with the most grisly murders in the history of a game famous for them.

 

 _no you aren’t,_ shuichi the detective says, setting his jaw. _not anymore. i’m shuichi saihara._

 

 _i know!_ mundane shuichi, murderer-wannabe shuichi says, hands clasping together and eyes shining. _that’s what i wanted. you’re amazing. the ultimate detective. just like we wanted._

 

 _i’m not a detective,_ shuichi replies automatically. _i’m still just an apprentice._

 

_to the whole world, though, you’re the ultimate detective! isn’t that exciting? people see you as a hero! you’re famous, you know? this is almost better than anything i hoped for. i didn’t think i’d be protagonist material._

 

 _it’s not exciting,_ shuichi says, jaw tightening. _it’s . . . a little scary. this isn’t a game, you know._

 

mundane shuichi’s expression seems so _genuine,_ and shuichi thinks he’d rather have kokichi’s unreadable expressions and easy lies than know something like this was the truth, when he says _but that’s exactly what it is!_


End file.
